One of the project we did this week was to make a sequin shamrock. Working with sequins is such a great way to help develop fine motor skills. I printed the shamrock pattern on cardstock paper and traced around it on a piece of green cardstock paper. After the shamrock was cut out the children applied glue drops and pressed sequins on the glue.

The free daily printable this week is Shamrock Number Match and Link which is a great activity for developing for number recognition as well as fine motor skills. I printed all pieces on cardstock paper ... cut them out and laminated them. I then punched a hole on one side of each card.

In this activity the children find the the the two cards with the same number and link them together with a learning link. If you do not have learning links you can also use pipe cleaners that have been cut into two inches in length. You can grab the patterns for free until Sunday March 8th ... after that they will only be available in the member's section.

I made shamrock playdough for our upcoming shamrock theme next week. I used my favorite recipe and just added a couple of extra ingredients.

To make the playdough you will need: 1 cup of flour 1 cup of water 1/4 cup of salt 2 tsp of cream of tartar 1 tbs of cooking oil 6-8 drops food coloring 2-3 drops of mint extract gold glitter (stirred in after I took the pan of the burner)

You just mix the ingredients together and cook over medium heat. It only takes a few minutes before it forms a lump of dough. You will need to stir the mixture continuously to prevent it from burning. Remove the dough from the pan and let it cool. You can then squish and squeeze it until it forms a playdough consistency. Store the dough in an air tight container.

I purchased gold jumbo glitter at walmart and I really like the way it added sparkle to the dough. I was going to use regular glitter until I saw the jumbo glitter. I was worried that the glitter would fall out of the dough and get all over but that did not happen.

The mint extract made the dough smell really yummy and I was really pleased with how the dough turned out. Besides free play we will be using the shamrock playdough with a mat that I will have available next week so keep and eye out for that!!

You can see a video of the shamrock playdough here or by clicking below:

I am pleased to announce that I am running a special on my membership printables at earlychildhoodprintables.com. The special is for a twelve month membership for the price of six months and contains all of the daily printables from the past ten years plus the new material that is added weekly. If you get a chance please check out the special here.

I have posted March's Number Tracing Calendar and Calendar Numbers along with other March items to my free printables page (if you do not see them at the bottom of the page please refresh your browser).

I made a color matching activity that also works on fine motor skills. I used a large circle punch to make the circles out of various colors of construction paper. I also made color word labels and printed those out.

I glued the nine color circles onto a 12x12 sheet of cardstock paper and put the color labels directly under each color circle.

I set out a small container of matching color pony beads and the children put the pony beads on the same color circle. I put fifteen beads for each color in the container but you can do more or less and have the children count how many are on each circle after they have put the beads on.

﻿Because of the size of the pony beads you will want to use supervision when working with children under the age of three and those still in the stages of putting small items in their mouths.﻿

We made marshmallow paint today and the children really enjoyed creating pictures with it. You just need to have marshmallow cream and food coloring. I got the original recipe from an early childhood art training that I attended but found that it was way too thick to be used easily by my students.

We scooped out the marshmallow cream and divided it evenly into a six section jumbo muffin tin. We added food coloring and stirred the marshmallow cream with craft sticks.

The mixture was really stiff so I modified the recipe by adding a little bit of warm water to each section and the children once again stirred it. The paint was still nice and thick but spread much more easily with a brush while the children were using it.

The paint was also very shiny and does take a bit to dry. When the children left for the day the pictures they had made were still a sticky but they were hangable. We used cardstock paper which was much more thicker and could hold the weight of the paint better than regular paper.